Gas turbine engines, such as those that power modern commercial and military aircraft, include a fan section to propel the aircraft, a compressor section to pressurize a supply of air from the fan section, a combustor section to burn a hydrocarbon fuel in the presence of the pressurized air, and a turbine section to extract energy from the resultant combustion gases and generate thrust.
Combustors used in these engines rely on panels of combustor thermal shields to guide combustion gases into the turbine. These panels can be curved, thin-walled cast sheets, with a “cold” side for maintaining thermal shield integrity and life, and an opposite “hot” side for guiding and containing the combustion gases.
The nature of conventional annular combustor design calls for both inner diameter (“ID”) and outer diameter (“OD”) panels as well as a bulkhead panel at the entrance which may or may not be curved, forming an inner and outer diameter wall, between which the combustion gases travel. The resultant assembly typically employs a variety of complex thin-walled castings with a variety of integrally cast attachment and cooling features. Any changes to the design result in costly and time-consuming casting changes.